Student learning around KPS

Grade 3

Grade 3 Garden Incursion

As our resident gardeners, Grade 3 was given the opportunity to be part of an urban biosecurity and community surveillance project for Agriculture Victoria that is co-funded by the Australian Government. Participating schools in high-risk pathway areas for plant pests have set up sentinel gardens for a few weeks this November and December. 

Antonette, an entomologist, and Jo, who is running the project, came out to our school on Monday 4th December and delivered a presentation on insects and the importance of biosecurity before the Grade Threes headed to the garden to set the traps.

Once the traps are analysed, the team will visit the school again and provide the results of the program and general information about the pests, reiterating the importance of biosecurity being a shared responsibility. 

As part of the project each child has been gifted a showbag with information about good and bad bugs, a microscopic lens to attach to phones or tablets for close up photos (very cool!) and information about sharing your “buggy” discovery with the project. 

Thank you to Ruby Rhodes for getting Kalinda involved in this project. The students were “buzzing” afterwards!

Some student reflections

“I learned a few things about bugs! Spiders aren’t insects, they are arachnids. Some bugs haven’t been, or discovered before so some people ask or email a bug researcher.” – Sophie

“Bugs are insects and very interesting because they crawl around your garden and they are a part of nature” – Tallejah

“We learnt that brown marmorated stink bugs stink a lot” – Abby

“When the bug people came in, we learnt about what the difference between good and bad bugs are. Then we went outside and set up bug traps, we also saw a big and weird looking bug. The good bugs are good because they help the plants grow and eat the bad bugs but the bad bugs eat the good bugs.” – Eddie and Ryder

“…After that we went to a table full of bugs and spiders called arachnids. All of them were dead apart from a few stick insects. Antonette held one of the stick insects in her hand.” – Emmett